Had mine for a couple of weeks. Not bad for 70 ukp's. Complements my S2000 and PC nicely. Its not perfect but there again the TB303 wasn't a perfect bass clone. Shame about the exspense of 5 volt smartmedia cards though there are ways round it ie record to minidisc. Its fun to use and easy to loop samples. Good to treat external sound sources through the filters and ring mod. This would partner a s20 very well. I think back to when the ensoniq mirage came out in the eighties and what that cost for a 8 bit sampler and look at this....I think wow technology is great and affordable. I wonder what an sp303 will be like?

Rating: 3 out of 5
posted Monday-Jan-15-2001 at 15:28

b boy
a hobbyist user
from Melbourne, Australia
writes:

As a UK DJ far away from my decks & vinyl, I bought an SP202 because it was extremely portable, pretty cheap ($A700) & enabled me to make music in the absence of a PC or turntable. (I'm now using it for an instrumental project with 2 guitarists.) As per some of the other postings, I love lo-fi, weird kit & hip-hop, so a lot of the common gripes about this unit just don't concern me. However, I have found an excellent way to work around some of the SP202's limitations; using a recordable mini-disc player as the sampler's 'memory'. I set it up like this: Run the line-out from the SP202 to an A/B switch box, send the A output to your monitor, the B output to the mini-disc line-in, and the mini-disc line-out to the SP202 line-in. nice...

This gives u easy access to some handy techniques:

1. In a live setting where you're sampling on the fly: when the sample banks r full, flick the switch to B (routing the output away from the main out & into the mini-disc). Record samples you want to keep to MD (monitoring on headphones). U can free-up memory without having to lose material or disrupt performance. (I've found that there's a negligible lose of quality when re-sampling back from MD).

2. FX: as suggested in another posting, record effected samples to MD & re-sample them back to free up polyphony. The A/B configuration just means u can do this quickly, with having to re-patch leads, etc.

3. Bounce-Down: record 2-4 samples playing together onto MD, then re-sample back to 1 pad. If you can get the levels right (ie. no difference in volume between the individual samples played together & the 'bounced-down' sample playing on 1 pad) this gives you 'extra polyphony' when creating songs.

4. Archiving: once I've finished a 'song' I record the 'sample-set' to MD & use the mini-disc Track Name function to make a note of the BPMs, sample rate & record level for each sample. You need to check the record level required for a balanced mix by sampling each sample back to the SP202- this is a pain & the most time-consuming part of the process. However, once I've got it right, I've found that I can 'load-up' a perfectly mixed set of 8 samples from MD in about 2 mins. I can arrive at rehearsal with 2 songs already loaded up, then clear the memory & have another 2 songs ready to go in the time it's taken the rest of the band to have a smoke break.

So anyway, if you're thinking about buying one of these, it definately helps if u have an MD.

(I haven't been able to find any (cheap) 5 volt Smart Media cards in Oz - in their main area of use (digital cameras) they've been superseded by 3.3 volt cards...)

Rating: 5 out of 5
posted Monday-Jan-15-2001 at 01:03

damian
a hobbyist user
from usa
writes:

I reccomend this sampler to anyone who has an imagination,and knows what they want accomplish musically. easy to use,fun,runs on batteries,and portable. what else can you ask for?

posted Sunday-Dec-17-2000 at 01:52

JB
a part-time user
from Canada
writes:

This unit is indeed fun to use but is'nt very practical. It's a cool toy. It is especially useful as a notebook to play stuff you're working on and try new structures. It's nice to own if it's not your main tool.Kinda big and weird looking (orange?! what the...). Note: i use smart media cards for digital camera, they cost almost half of the roland smartmedia cards (same thing). I did experience weird white noise that was created on the 4th,7th and 8th pads in the 7th and 8th banks. I had to resample those sounds.

Rating: 2 out of 5
posted Saturday-Dec-02-2000 at 01:06

Rick
a part-time user
from CA
writes:

Hook this baby up to a DR202 and watch out. Lotta fun and both of em can run on batteries. Cool. Very portable and easy to use set up. Dont listen to the whiners. Just play and have fun with this.